Friday, September 22, 2017

Sweating the small stuff. And it's all small stuff.

The expression is "Don't sweat the small stuff. And it's all small stuff". But for professors there appears to be a lot of it. I try to stay on top of all the little requests for my time "do you have a moment?" Collegues, students etc they all need "just a minute" resiltkng in a very fractured day. If I am rested I can refocus better than today when I am just super tired (teaching & public talk yesterday).

And I am trying to finish some papers that I have 99% of? Frustrating. So I am sweating the small stuff. Namely how to get rid of a flood of it. Suggestions welcome.

Sunday, September 10, 2017

Focus Interrupted

This is not an insight I got to by myself but it may be worth sharing here. Academics get hired for their ability to focus on a problem. In essence do "deep work" and then institutions flood them with interruptions. All of which "just" takes five minutes (15 in reality) of their time. Never mind online distractions that Universities have nothing to do with (well helloo Twitter).

There is ample evidence that interruptions are tricky to recover from if one is doing deep or focussed work. I am finding it a bit ironic that therefore people hide in coffee shops or libraries in order to get the deep focussed work done that is the central theme on why they are getting paid. Leave work to do work.

And it opens a view in the blind spot of many administrations that recovery or abolity to focus are not given. And so the academic who works at night or in the weekend is generated. All part of a toxic mix for work/life balance. So how to keep focus (and recover focus "what was I working on?") in the face of interruptions is something I now spend time thinking about.

The more focused I work,the easier I find it to shut work off too. And thus sleep. And focus again. So. Any help on how to get there "on tge zone" reliably is appreciated.

Friday, September 8, 2017

Grant rejections.

Today my ADAS grants were rejected. So it goes. However there are grant rejections and grant rejections these days. The NASA ADAS appears to follow the model that the ERC seems to love too: reject, reject again with reasons and just to be sure send a paper rejection over the mail.

I am sure there is some sort of internal process that led to this but to the poor proposers (me in this case) it ends up coming acros like a grant agency really needs to let you know how much your proposal sucked.

Rejection ispart and parcel of academic life. And one has to be resilient in the face of it. But multiple rejection notifications for a single proposal. Seems cruel. And given the valid worry regarding mental health issues in academia, a simple fix. Just tell me what the panel liked and what it did not. Once.